Canada could help balance the scales with China as tensions rise in South China Sea, experts say

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has an opening during this week's summit with regional leaders in Laos to step up Canada's efforts to help Southeast Asian countries facing escalating threats from China, experts say.

Southeast Asian countries want to stop China from using its navy, Coast Guard and merchant vessels to bully them during territorial disputes, and they need stronger protection from cyber threats, said Stephen Nagy, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a specialist in Indo-Pacific security matters.

«None of the countries in the region want to escalate the security tensions within the region, but they do want to have the capabilities to be able to deal with these challenges bilaterally with China,» Nagy said.

On Thursday, Trudeau begins two days of talks with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional bloc made up of Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia.

The ASEAN's mission is to foster economic growth and promote peace and stability. But promoting peace in the region has gotten more challenging in recent years as China's approach to foreign relations has grown more aggressive.

This week's summit is happening against a backdrop of rising tensions in the South China Sea, a vital international trade artery. China is claiming most of the busy waterway, despite overlapping claims by Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam.

China's been using «hybrid tactics,» Nagy said — including the deployment of coast guard and merchant vessels to pressure the Philippines or the Vietnamese to move away from territory it believes falls within its exclusive economic zone.

The Vietnamese foreign ministry recently accused Chinese law